Recommendations: Power Up Your Analytics Skillset with Tableau Public

Recommendations: Power Up Your Analytics Skillset with Tableau Public

July 15, 2024

I presented the Power Up Your Analytics Skillset with Tableau Public at Discover Financial Services’ 2024 Tableau Day. I introduced Tableau Public’s features and recommended ways to leverage the platform as a visual analytics practitioner. The original target audiences were data analysts and business intelligence (BI) tool developers at Discover. Still, the recommendations here can be applied to Tableau learners regardless of their practice fields.

Kevin Wee (me)

Follow my social media accounts, where I passionately share innovative DataViz designs from other practitioners and me. Feel free to ask questions about my presentation content or discuss any DataViz matters.

Introduction to Tableau Public

Tableau Public is a free data visualization and analytics application from Tableau. You may sign up for an account for free, start creating charts and dashboards (i.e., vizzes) in their browser app, and publish them on your online portfolio. Note that you may also download the desktop app, but in this blog, I will focus on the features of the browser app and how you may leverage it to develop your analytics skillsets.

The following materials may enable you to better understand the fundamental functions of Tableau Public as a data visualization and storytelling platform:

Landing Page Sections

Tableau Public Landing Page contains curated visualizations under specific topics.

You may regularly check the following sections on the Tableau Public landing page as the content may benefit your work in analytics and BI tool development:

You may “save” a viz under your profile by clicking the star icon under the thumbnail of a viz

Click the Add Favorite (star icon ☆) under the infographics or dashboards (“vizzes”) you deem inspirational to tag them under your profile’s Favorites tab. These tagged vizzes may inspire your future projects.

Authors to Follow

Many Tableau Public authors have dashboards and charts on business analytics. First and foremost, I’d also recommend you check out the profiles of all Tableau Public Ambassadors (latest cohort) and all authors I follow. These authors may not always create business dashboards, but their visualization and graphic design ideas may be transferrable to business settings. Please consider following them to learn from their practices and creations.

Chimdi Nwosu, a Tableau Visionary and Public Ambassador, has excellent dashboards and infographics in both light and dark modes.

The following are call-outs to profiles specific to business dashboard design:

The Recent Activity section on the landing page indicates the vizzes recently published or favorited by the people you follow.

New vizzes published or favorited by the authors you follow will appear in the Recent Activity section on the Tableau Public landing page. So, do check the section out regularly!

Moreover, please pay attention to every author’s profile links (top-right section), as many have a YouTube channel, LinkedIn posts, or blogs sharing more Tableau how-tos. Follow the breadcrumbs, and you shall unlock more learning materials from these authors!

Community Projects

Tableau Public contains a library of DataFam challenges with free datasets and prompts, enabling you to put your visual analytics skills into training and test.

Participating in the DataFam community challenges is one of the quickest ways to grow your data analytics skills. These challenges regularly provide datasets and prompts online so DataViz practitioners may leverage them to create charts, dashboards, and infographics. Participation is always free, and the only requirement is that you have a DataViz tool, e.g., Tableau Public.

The following are the community challenges with prompts related to business analytics:

Extra tip: If you check out the hashtags above on LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social media, you will find the vizzes created by Tableau users worldwide for these challenges.

Helpful Features for DataViz Creators

Tableau Public has both browser and desktop apps; both are freely accessible.
  • You may create a viz directly on your profile via the Create a Viz function. Alternatively, you may download the desktop app for free via Create (top-left navigation tab of the webpage) > Download Tableau Desktop Public Education.
  • You may leverage sample datasets in diverse topics and data sizes for practice or upload any data table under 15 million rows of your choice.
  • Make a copy and Download functions allow you to duplicate others’ workbooks and inspect how a viz was made.
  • You may hide any of your vizzes by unchecking the Show Viz on Profile toggle switch. The function lets you curate your display collection freely without removing any vizzes.
The Show Viz on Profile toggle switch enables user to curate the vizzes on their profile.

Summary

Tableau Public is a free and easy-to-use app for analytics practitioners to build a data visualization portfolio and demonstrate their data skill sets. Moreover, it is an excellent starting point for those who seek engagement in the Tableau practitioner community, i.e., DataFam.

I hope the resources and pointers provided here help you initiate your journey of using the app. Feel free to reach out for any questions! Happy learning!

Thank You

I want to thank the following people and institutes for the presentation’s success: